HELP! Indie Metal Band in doubt (regarding Mastering)

[Mea_Culpa89]

Hello world!

My band just finished mixing our second demo! The result is pretty balanced (although it sounds "demo-ish" and unpolished)

We are currently trying to decide what to do with mastering. We made some attempts and although the result is louder, we can't make it "sit" well on most systems, so the question is:

Should we keep on trying to master it ourselves? Or leave it to someone who knows what he's doing?

The problem is that we DON'T have a clear picture of what a mastering engineer can do. We know that mastering, in general, can give life to a mix, and we have listened to various "before/after" reference mixes, but we are unsure about our own songs, is specific. We might like it and pay for it, or we might feel that we can do it ourselves.

Correct me if i am wrong, but with this in mind, we simply CAN NOT contact a mastering engineer and tell him "dude, master this sh*t for us, but, eventually, we might find out that we need NO mastering assistance!!" Is it fair for the guy? Even if the guy offers free sample for a song, would it be "cheating" to contact him?

Cheers, and thanx in advance

 

[Notuern]

Looking at your post it seems that the mix isnt that good from start, and mastering wont fix that at all.
I would go back to the mixing part and start polishing everything up there, and when you are really happy with the mix, THEN it might be worth mastering.. but if it still sounds "demo-ish" and "unpolished" theres no reason to do any real mastering either.

Im not trying to offend you with this comment, but you really cant polish a turd(Unless its frozen.).

 

[LeSedna]

Yeo, and post a sample clip so that we can answer you more specifically

 

[Mea_Culpa89]

Ok guys! Here is the link:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8685282/MassMediaWhore.mp3

So this is the final unmastered export of "Mass Media's Whore", third track of the demo.
I know the mix of our demo is not perfect, but can a good mastering really give us a "polished", non "demo-ish" result?

Thanks in advance, any help would be much appreciated!

 

[updog]

I know the mix of our demo is not perfect, but can a good mastering really give us a "polished", non "demo-ish" result?

Sorry, but no. That mix needs a lot more work. As someone said in another related thread, mastering is only enhancing what's already there.

I'd either mix it again, or if you're happy with the sound then I recommend doing the mastering yourself. Or get someone else to mix your demo.

 

[Mea_Culpa89]

Sorry, but no. That mix needs a lot more work. As someone said in another related thread, mastering is only enhancing what's already there.

I'd either mix it again, or if you're happy with the sound then I recommend doing the mastering yourself. Or get someone else to mix your demo.

Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to the song.

We are happy that we mixed this 2nd demo, all done DIY (tracking, editing, mixing), the result is not great, but we made great progress compared to our first demo (production wise, even though i am still learning, apparently we did our best, but still not sounding great)

Unfortunately there are very few things that we can make to improve this mix. In fact,it is considered "final", due to various restrictions that prevent us from revising the mix.

So, i guess there are only a few things to be done on mastering, and we can do it ourselves?! Our first demo had even more problems mixing wise, but the mastering engineer managed to somewhat "polish" the mix, giving it more warmth, volume and balance (of course we didn't expect any wonders, but we were more than satisfied from the result)

And the question for my first post still remains: We would kill to listen to a song properly mastered, despite any weaknesses. This way we would know if we should pay for mastering the whole demo. But would it be moral to contact a guy just to satisfy our curiosity, or we should keep on trying ourselves?

 

[Mago]

I don't think that proper mastering would cause it to sound THAT much better, sorry man....

 

[nwright]

The last thing I'd call the mix is "balanced", haha. Maybe I'm bored, and maybe I made it sound worse, but for curiosity's sake, I DL'd the mp3 and messed with it a bit. Lots of MB compression and loads of EQ notches, cut, boosts and everything else. Just listened on headphones and their are some clippy crispies, but I did this with my monitors at just above whisper level, so meh...

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1160146/MassMediaWhore.mp3